The Kitchenish Project

When we bought our house, one of the first things we noticed was the lack of an outdoor light in the back yard. So, over the last couple days, I decided to remedy that problem. Being a relatively small project, it should have taken a few hours, but because I kept saying "well, if I'm doing that, then I may as well do this" over and over and it turned into a couple of days (about 9 hours total).

Keep in mind, the desired result is to mount the following to the outside of the house:


My first "well......" was to put in a 3 way switch for the kitchen fan/light, leaving one in it's original position and putting another one in the wall by the sliding glass door next to the switch for the future outside light. That's the red circle in the folowing picture. The blue oval is where I had to cut out the sheetrock to drill a hole into the attic to run wires (couldn't drill down because of the angle of the roof) and to run wires outside to the new fixture. I didn't take a before picture, but assume it's just a blank wall with nothing there at all. The second picture is of the switch when it's completed (sans coverplate).

So then I said "well.........." and decided to put in a fan control knob where the original fan/light switch was, thereby alleviating myself of any and all responsibilities of pulling the stupid chain when Mona wants the fan on and the light off. Now she will be able to do it with the flip of a switch. How smart am I? Anyway, here's the before and after (the random patch in the second photo is the result of a mishap with a hammer...):

So, then all that's left is completing the wiring in the fan mounting box and remounting the fan. None of which I have a picture of, because I was trying to hook it all up as fast as I could while Mona held the fixture over her head while standing on a step stool.

This concluded day one. It should be noted that I did in fact wire one of the 3 way switches wrong, and the light didn't turn on/off like it should, however 5 minutes this morning with a screwdriver fixed that problem.

Finally, when I got around today, came the actual outdoor light part. YAY!!!

Since I'd already run the wires with the switches yesterday, the first step is to cut a hole in the house. Well, siding anyway. Since there was no tutorial I could find on the internet, I kind of made it up as I went along. If you hear of anyone who wants to do this, let me know, I took enough pictures I think I could write up a quick one if they need one.

Next, I drilled a hole through the exterior of the house, mounted the bracket, and ran the wires outside.

Then, all that was left was to connect the wires, mount the light, and do a bit of caulking. The end result:
Surprisingly, this one worked right the first time. Dimmer switch and all... I was rather suprised.





And now, if there happen to still be any ladies reading this, I feel it necessary to my future health to include a picture of the dog, so I want to take this time to point out that when he helps me, he stays much cleaner than when he helps Mona. I think this may have some sort of correlation to the fact that he "works" much less when helping me.